Generally, it is important for a driver to securely monitor side and rear surroundings of a vehicle when the driver tries to perform a lane change or backing of the vehicle in order to prevent a traffic accident.
For a lane change or backing of a vehicle, a driver generally conducts such operations after monitoring the side and rear surroundings of the vehicle using side and room mirrors and determining that there are no obstacles around the vehicle.
However, inexperienced drivers are not used to checking the side and rear surroundings using the side and room mirrors, thereby resulting in the risk of traffic accidents being caused.
To solve this problem, a related art discloses a camera unit which includes a camera provided on a rear side of a vehicle to take images of the side and rear surroundings of the vehicle, and a monitor provided on an interior of the vehicle to display the images for monitoring of the surroundings of the vehicle. However, when a vehicle is driven in muddy environment or rainy weather, for example, a camera lens may be contaminated with foreign substances, making it impossible for the camera unit to provide a clean display.
Further, particularly for a content management system (CMS) monitoring all of a front, sides, and rear surroundings of a vehicle, a separate driving unit has to be provided to remove foreign substances dirtying the camera lens, causing increased manufacturing cost and complex configuration of the CMS system.
The foregoing is intended merely to aid in the understanding of the background of the present disclosure, and is not intended to mean that the present disclosure falls within the purview of the related art that is already known to those skilled in the art.